Her family has had the lowest numbered regularly issued license plate in Maine for some 65 years now. Only our governor has a lower number. So when Evelyn Stinson shows up at the post office in her tan Buick Regal she’s accustomed to the scowls of strangers who stare at the “2” on the front license plate. A common question, according to Mrs. Stinson, is “Was your husband in the Legislature?”

“No, he wasn’t,” comes the polite reply from this personable Wilton widow of Howard Stinson.

Indeed, the story of how her husband did attain such status when, as a Portland electrician and bus driver, the “2” became his about 1940 does illustrate one of the ways lower numbers are assigned in Maine.

According to Mrs. Stinson, Howard’s first wife, June, was a nurse, who before her death operated a small nursing home in their Portland residence. A physician associated with the home held the plate number; they acquired it through him.

Thus, Howard Stinson’s acquisition of the coveted “2” plate was achieved through the courtesy of a family friend. The plate is also the technical property of the state. This means that the transfer of all plates, including the prestigious low number plates, can only occur by approval from the secretary of state himself. Because our state secretaries must stand for election by the Legislature every two years, the question frequently posed to Mrs. Stinson is a logical one, as many of the low numbers are held by former solons or their families.

Indeed, the person awarded the “2” plate 100 years ago when Maine adopted its first car registration law was the very embodiment of political power and privilege.

He was 30-year-old Frederick Hale. Though a freshman member of the 1905 Maine House, Hale was the son of U.S. Senate majority leader Eugene Hale and the grandson of former Detroit mayor and Michigan U.S. Senator Zachariah Chandler.

The scion of inherited Chandler family wealth, Hale would go on to purchase the influential Portland Daily Press, a forerunner to today’s Press Herald, and also win election to four terms as a U.S. senator from Maine.

Some years later, probably after Hale’s first election to the Senate in 1916, the “2” passed to the Portland physician, who in turn sponsored its transfer to Howard Stinson. By the 1960s, Stinson returned to his native Franklin County and married Evelyn. Together they operated a chicken farm in Wilton, where Howard also resumed his electrician’s practice.

Later, in 1966, they established the area’s only indoor roller skating establishment, the Livermore Falls Roller Rink, which they operated for more than a dozen years before their retirement.

Even though the “2” plate is now the lowest resident held number, in the early years of our license plate law it took a back seat in this category to “1.”

Only with the Gov. Percival Baxter’s administration in 1921 was the “1” allocated to our governor. It was Baxter, who coincidentally as a private citizen, held “1” upon his accession to the Blaine House and who upon leaving office four years later requested the number automatically remain with whoever held our highest state office.

The original “1” plate holder was 71-year-old one-term state Rep. Richmond Ingersoll. Unlike “2’s” first holder, Fred Hale, Ingersoll was a low profile figure, a quiet backbencher in the House. Though Ingersoll had for 35 years been a bank treasurer in Biddeford and was the first Maine grand chancellor of the Knights of Pythias, he was not the kind of premiere figure upon whom one would have expected Maine’s first “1” to have been bestowed.

The town of Wilton’s claim to low number license plate fame does not by any means end with the “2” position held by the Stinson family. The first “5,” for example, was issued to Wilton’s Gardner Fernald, a grain and flour miller, who like the Stinsons, was a private figure.

An early holder of “88” was the governor’s Executive Councilor Cy Blanchard, who held the number until his death in 1947 when it was turned over to fellow Wilton attorney, Judge Hubert Ryan, whose widow relinquished it to the state in 1999. It remained dormant until last December when it was assigned to Joe Hanslip. Though Hanslip at the time was a York County commissioner and is now a Sanford town councilor, he is closely associated with, and is well known in, Wilton, where he owns a second residence, a longtime family home.

Besides those having ties to Wilton, others showing up among the first low numbers were car dealers. Among these were Farmington’s Frank McLeary, who claimed “10” and Fort Fairfield’s Philo Reed, “98.” If Reed’s last name and residence look familiar it’s because he was the grandfather to John Reed, twice elected Maine governor in the 1960s.

Reached by this columnist at his Washington, D.C., home a few days ago, Reed recalled that though his grandfather never held political office he was a major potato contractor and was one of the first car dealers in northern Maine, selling the Star and Whippet lines.

Not all of those originally awarded low number plates cherished them as a privilege. Take Percy Baxter’s older brother, Hartley, issued “3,” when in 1905 some 700 other numbers were also given out. Though reputed to have become the first person in Maine to own and operate a car in 1898, this Baxter was also known for some occasional carelessness behind the wheel. As a proud owner of a Brunswick canning business and the son of longtime Portland mayor – and boulevard benefactor – James Baxter, he thus found the “3” a too easy means of being fingered in his automotive embarrassments. He gave it up and thus became a Baxter who would rather run for cover than for governor.

Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of Maine’s political scene. He can be reached by e-mail: [email protected].